Here's an interesting article from the Syracuse Post-Standard about the New York Planning Federation award to the Town of Cato for its farmland preservation plan. Also included is some potentially award-winning animal husbandry photography.
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There's patron saints for all the people planners deal with every day; architects, lawyers, politicians, civil engineers, builders, and real estate agents. There's even patron saints for candle makers, taxi drivers, clowns, truss makers, stenographers, pastry chefs, soap boilers, and French airline crews. However, there's no patron saint of urban planners. It's not fair. We're the city builders, the place makers, the ones who bring order out of a chaotic built environment, yet there's nobody up there looking out for us. A developer can light a candle and call out to any or all of six patrons — Barbara Blaise, Louis IX, Our Lady of Loreto, Thomas the Apostle, and Vincent Ferrer — for aid in getting a property rezoned. There's no patron a planner can turn for help to convince the powers that be the request doesn't conform to the comprehensive plan, and should be denied. Sure, there's always Saint Jude, the patron saint of hopeless causes, but he's already overworked, with those thousands of classified ads he has to read every day.
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For the past 20 years, mobile phones have become more and more common in office places all over the world. In the past handful of year with the advent of the iPad, technology has taken hold of how we do business daily. Applications (Apps) for mobile phones, the iPad, and all the other similar devices are helping to pave the way for a more integrated public process between planners and the community.

With so many residents or clients having mobile phones and iPads, there are numerous apps that can help them interact with your department; help you gather data on them; and help your community project a certain aura. Below you will find ten categories of apps with some of the best examples of the group concept listed. These apps vary in price, but all do one thing very well – move the planning process forward and into the 21st Century.
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TED, an acronym for "Technology, Entertainment and Design", is a series of conferences formed to spread "ideas worth spreading". TED's mission statement is:

"We believe passionately in the power of ideas to change attitudes, lives and ultimately, the world. So we're building here a clearinghouse that offers free knowledge and inspiration from the world's most inspired thinkers, and also a community of curious souls to engage with ideas and each other."

TED conferences include a number of TED Talks by influential presenters on a variety of subjects. The popularity of TED spread when TED Talks were made available online, and a growing number of TEDx events were organized in cities throughout the world. Until recently, the talks focused on technology, multimedia, science and design. With awareness of issues related to the built environment coming to the forefront in recent years, it was inevitable that urban planning and urbanism would become the subject of many TED Talks. Here's 12 planning-related Talks as an introduction to what TED offers. Unfortunately, they aren't eligible for AICP CE credits.
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